Awareness How do you bring about awareness that question popped into our head when we read that the ministry of education and the Leo Club are going to tackle the always interesting issue of drugs and alcohol awareness. Obviously, the initiative is not meant to make youngsters aware that there are drugs and alcohol available in abundance on the island. The objective is to tell them to stay away from drugs and alcohol. But how do you do that? It is easy to give cheap advice. Don’t do drugs. Don’t get drunk. Simple and straightforward. But here is the thing…
Author: The Publisher
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GREAT BAY – The public prosecutor has charged former airport-director Regina Labega, author Fabian Badejo and a third suspect, Erica F. of membership of a criminal organization that embezzled money from the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau. Other activities of this organization were filing incorrect tax returns for wage, profit and income taxes, forgery, money laundering and fraud. Trial date set for May 10 Yesterday there was a pro forma hearing in the Court in First Instance. Only Labega appeared. The court set the date for the trial at May 10 – 6 years and 5 months after the former head…
Dear Editor, Through its work, Transparency International (TI), a global organization, hopes to realize a world in which government, business, civil society and the daily lives of people will be free of corruption. Upon a country’s request, TI assesses its weaknesses and strengths with regard to integrity and good governance. Assessments were conducted for the Netherlands in 2012, for Curaçao in 2013 and for St. Maarten in 2015. To be able to assess a country’s integrity, TI looks at several pillars such as the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, the public sector, law enforcement agencies, etc. For the…
With Carnival heating up the matter of culture becomes once more a topic for debate. What is it exactly? Not daggering in the streets, if we have to go by the St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation. It’s something else – like, people behaving properly. That may be true in an imaginary world, in the real world things go differently. That appeared once more in the courthouse yesterday where a man stood trial for, among other things, ill-treating his wife. The woman filed complaints, then wanted to withdraw them and in the end took the wise decision to seek a divorce.…
That the president of the Central Bank failed the screening by the national security service VDSM is an eye opener. Even more of a wakeup call is that nobody ever thought about ordering such a screening, until Finance Minister Richard Gibson did this in June of last year. All this begs the question how many more people are sitting in confidential positions that have never been screened. When the process was applied to airport director Regina Labega – who is in court today – she failed and lost her job because of it. Now Tromp has fallen by the wayside…
GREAT BAY – The suspended president of the Central Bank, Dr. Emsley Tromp (see photo) has failed a screening by the national security service VDSM, Finance Minister Richard Gibson said at yesterday’s Council of Ministers press briefing. This means that Tromp can no longer return in his function. Minister Gibson announced in June of last year that he had ordered the screening. The security service of Curacao has not completed its screening of Tromp yet, but Minister Gibson said that the outcome of the investigation by the VDSM affects both countries. Tromp and the two managing directors of the Central…
THE HAGUE – The turnout for the March 15 parliamentary elections was 81.9 percent – the highest in more than twenty years. The Electoral Council announced this on Tuesday when it presented the official election results. The only surprise is that GreenLeft is a little bit larger than the Socialist Party. Both parties hold 14 seats in the new Parliament but GreenLeft won 4,000 votes more. The VVD remains, in spite of a loss of eight seats, the largest party with 33 seats. The PvdA collapsed from 38 to 9 while the PVV became the country’s second largest party by…
Last week’s general election in the Netherlands was one of the most closely watched in years. But the fact that Geert Wilders’ radical right party failed to make major gains does not mean he has not had an impact. While most of the world was focused only on one party, the radical right populist Party for Freedom (PVV) and its leader Geert Wilders, the Dutch cast their votes widely across 13 parties, two of them winning seats for the first time. No party got more than 22 percent of the vote. For the rest of the world, the fact that…
That the Collective Preventive Service recommends the use of toothpaste and mouth water containing fluoride may surprise some readers. After all, fluoride has been at the center of disputes in many countries. Its use is, at least, controversial. Medicalnewstoday.com published the following information about the controversy. A growing number of people are asking why we are being “medicated” in such large numbers without being consulted first. Surely, if fluoride is a medication and is being added to our water supply, shouldn’t this occur with our approval? There is also concern that perhaps it is not possible to accurately control exactly…
Twee days after the fourfold liquidation near Parera on the access road to Punda the police in Willemstad still has no idea whatsoever about what happened last Saturday night. NOS-correspondent Dick Drayer sums up the situation in his personal blog De Aachterkant van Curacao. “Even better: Chief Commissioner Mauricio Sambo complains publicly about the fact that hardly any witnesses have come forward in the first hours after the murder of 32-year-old Reegi Angelista, 39-year-old Elery Cijntje, 48-year-old Harold Francisca and 54-year-old Purcival Brooks. Literally Sambo says: “It cannot be so that in such a crowded area like Parera on Saturday…
